


The Iron Price

by DarthGarou



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Psychological Torture, Terrifying Tolkien Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 16:16:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12535904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarthGarou/pseuds/DarthGarou
Summary: Melkor needs to get through Finwë on his way to the Silmarils.





	The Iron Price

**Author's Note:**

> My entry for the fourth day of Terrifying Tolkien Week.

Finwë did not shudder when the doors to his hall in Formenos groaned open. Darkness weaved its webs around the windows and smoke filled the air.

With a crack of lightning, Melkor emerged in the doorway, his black spear slung lazily over his shoulder. He regarded Finwë with a wide grin on his ashen lips, his abyssal eyes clashing with glittering silver.

“Well met,” he offered, leaning on the ruined door frame.

Something moved with a hiss in the hallway behind Melkor’s back and the darkness grew thicker. Finwë squared his shoulders.

“I doubt that,” he said flatly and sipped his tea. Melkor’s eyes followed the cup to his lips and back to the table.

“This will not go well for you,” Melkor rumbled, and Finwë struggled to identify the unfamiliar undertone of his voice. He moved his spear to his other shoulder, quirking up a brow. “The length of your ordeal is up to you.”

Finwë scoffed into his cup. His shadow seemed to be creeping up around his ankles, accompanied by a phantom tightness. “How generous of you to give me a choice.”

Melkor laughed mirthlessly. “What else would I give you?”

Thick shadows wrapped around Finwë’s body to hold him in place and lick at his fëa, a beady-eyed swell of darkness settling just behind the destroyed door. Still, Finwë held his head high and breathing even.

“How is your faith?” Melkor’s voice cracked through the hall like a whip. He drew closer to Finwë until he towered over him, pouring infernos and blizzards into his surroundings, the Void reaching out from his eyes to snuff the torches.

“What does it matter to you?” Finwë asked derisively.

“Let me show you your maker’s intent,” Melkor whispered like a promise and reached out to touch Finwë’s cheek.

He saw eight drawn swords and heard a promise more binding that the tightest chains. Tirion was deserted and all the people he knew were marching away, having abandoned their homes and lives for… what, exactly?

“A good question,” Melkor remarked. Finwë drew a sharp breath and clenched his teeth.

When he saw the familiar havens stained red with blood spilled by his kin, he closed his eyes and turned away from Melkor. The claws dug bloody lines into his cheeks and a point of contact still remained.

His first sailed over the sea on the stolen ships, and Finwë felt relief before he could restrain his thought. Melkor’s sigh sent cracks crawling up the high walls and then the ships burned, along with his grandson. They screamed in unison before Finwë managed to reign in his voice.

He tried to draw away from Melkor’s touch, but he couldn’t.

“Stop stalling,” Finwë forced through his gritted teeth as he watched Fëanor pursue flames cloaked in shadow to his death. Tears welled up in his eyes. “I care not for the lies you show me.”

Melkor tilted his head to the side and the visions faded out. Finwë’s breathing was laboured, but he looked Melkor in the face even through his tears.

“A pity I shall not be in Mandos to enjoy your expression when you realise that I have, in fact, shown you nothing but the truth,” Melkor hummed playfully, the sound of his voice like hail drumming on metal.

“Slay me and be done with it, fiend,” Finwë spat.

Melkor tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. He rested his spear on the wall and took Finwë’s face in his clawed hands almost gently despite Finwë struggling to avoid his grasp. He looked into the glittering silvers, noting their dimming light.

“I have told you already that the length of this is entirely up to you.”

The visions returned, accompanied by an assault on Finwë’s senses - his second watching the ships burn at the other side of the sea before turning to the north. The wind howled and cold wormed into the bones of the host, mist lapping at their feet. With little regard for their lack of supplies, the host headed for the Grinding Ice.

The first dead came soon enough. Finwë watched his people regard them with sorrow, then dull acceptance, then despair, then felt their empty stomachs turn as the bodies changed from the deceased to a resource.

“Liar!” he howled, straining against the shadows. They wrapped around him tighter, but not tight enough to suffocate him. Finwë found himself wishing otherwise. He managed to spare Melkor a glare. “Even if this was the truth, it would all be your doing.”

“I may have weaved my share of chaos and ruin into this World, but this?” He gestured around, both of them in the middle of an icy landscape that groaned as the icebergs ground against one another, freezing mist creeping down their throats, frost drawing swirling patterns on Melkor’s black breastplate. “Your kin will do this and much more to themselves and to others. I will not lift a finger to make them do any of this.”

“I don’t believe you,” Finwë growled, unwavering even in the face of darkness and horror.

“That hardly makes it untrue,” Melkor mused, staring at a group of elves gathered around a fresh cadaver. He watched Fingolfin approach it and make off with a stiff forearm that he warmed on his skin before biting into it. Finwë didn’t.

And then Melkor steered Finwë’s gaze back over the sea to a growing forest of tents in his eldest’s colours, white and sangria. Darkness descended upon them, a raid of sharp steel and choking fumes followed by howling in the forest.

Yet their ambushers shattered on them like waves facing the sharp edges of a cliff. They retreated, then turned to flee, while Fëanáro’s warriors gave chase with shining steel. He was the one at the lead, blood burning hot in his veins.

When he left his companions too far behind, blood froze in Finwë’s veins. He dismissed the horror washing over him as shadow and flame took his eldest to their crushing embrace, telling himself it was but one of Melkor’s lies over and over like a litany.

His body burned to ashes that were carried away by the icy wind.

And Finwë, with despair bleeding out of his mind and tears running down his pale cheeks, left his body behind and fled to Mandos in the hope of finding a harbor to shelter him from Melkor’s lies.

Melkor watched his body go limp and slide off the chair onto the floor. He stepped over it on his way to the vault.


End file.
